It’s a fascinating and awful thing, to think first of the potential the world has and then of our ability to piss it away with cruelty, selfishness and the films of Joel Schumacher. The UN reckons in a world of six billion potentially happy people, 2.7 billion are living in extreme poverty. There can’t be many who think that’s how the world should work.

Of the many reasons for poverty, trade is about the most frustrating because it’s entirely manmade and championed by people blind to the consequences of conscience-free capitalism. In this section we’ll look at how subsidies for giant corporations are crippling poor farmers, how we destroy generations by paying workers a pittance, how trade barriers and tariffs make free trade a lie, and what hope there is for change in the Fair Trade movement. Chances are this will be the section where I cross the line from irreverence to colossal inappropriateness.